Saturday, July 21, 2012

On Aurora

"Once again our nation’s attention is riveted on a single act of violence ..." commented the head of the US Conference of Mayors on the shooting in Aurora.

That's true. It's a single act of violence. And, as predictably as day following night, it'll be followed up by a rash of editorials and pronouncements from the pundits. Same thing happened after Columbine. Same thing happened after Virginia Tech. Same thing happened after Fort Hood.

But guess what, folx? This is news. Why do we call it that? Because it's rare!

For example, your tax money probably paid to have several dozen people killed today somewhere in Afghanistan. Does that bother you? Did you even hear about it? Do you ever think about it? Of course not. It's not news because it's normal, usual, customary, accepted, no different from yesterday.

Or how about the hundred people who will die today in vehicle crashes? Ever give them a moment's thot? Or the additional hundred people who will die today due to something going wrong with the legal drugs they took (not even gonna get near the illegal ones)?

The take-home point here should be that anything that only happens once every 4-5 years in a nation of 310,000,000 people is a sign that we're doing a whole lot of things right the rest of the time. We should start worrying when something like this happens and it doesn't make headlines.